How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the Golden Age of Rom-Coms

“Frost yourself.” On the list of dated How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days references, that advertising slogan — used to sell diamonds, not cupcakes, and designed as a poster, not a hashtag — would have to feature prominently. How to Lose is ten years old this month, and it shows its age in all sorts of ways: The heroine works for a women’s magazine that is “growing”; Matthew McConaughey is wearing shirts; Knicks tickets are valued objects. But the biggest old-school sign might be that How to Lose is a Kate Hudson rom-com that earned $105 million domestically. Even more telling: It's actually good.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a relic of a happier time, when Hollywood still believed in female audiences and Kate Hudson hadn’t done that horrible movie about ass cancer. (Spoiler: Little Bit of Heaven ends with Kate Hudson ghost-dancing at her own New Orleans jazz funeral while Whoopi Goldberg–as-God looks on. I will never get those two hours back.) Hudson is at her peak in How to Lose: bubbly, confident, a screwball comedy natural. The plot — Hudson's magazine writer attempts to scare off a guy in the name of journalism, but ends up falling for him; he turns out to be wooing her for a work bet, but loves her too! — is unapologetic about its rom-com-ness. Whatever you might have thought of Fool’s Gold, Hudson and McConaughey have real chemistry in their first pairing, and the movie hits all the right genre notes: a glamorous job! Fancy cocktails and apartments! A romantic climax backdropped by a major New York City landmark! That yellow dress! It’s not Best Picture material, fine, but it’s well-made movie candy and a reminder that all rom-coms don’t have to be holiday-centric Love Actually rip-offs.

If only Kate Hudson had appreciated its relative quality. She is partly to blame, at least for the drop-off in her own career; she rode the rom-com train as long as she could, and to a lot of regrettable places (Raising Helen and Bride Wars come to mind). But if How to Lose actually got made today, it would either contain a Melissa McCarthy archery B plot or, worse yet, die unnoticed at the box office. The dedicated among us might remember to save it in a Netflix queue. So here is a resolution, How to Lose enthusiasts: In honor of its memory, and the Golden Age of Falling in Love in 90 Minutes or Less, go buy a ticket to the next big rom-com. It might not be great, but it's a future investment, telling studios the genre is not dead. Then you can go home and watch How to Lose on cable.

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